Monday, September 6th.
This past weekend we rented a car and drove for about 3 hours, mostly north but also west, to an area of the country that is considered to be the authentic, quintessential Sweden. Supposedly if you visit the Lake Siljan (Silyan) region, you will see what Swedish people think of as what makes them Swedish.
Sweden is COVERED with lakes. If a town is not on the seacoast, it is likely on a lake or river. Water is ubiquitous, and in between all of this water is farmland and forest. Lake Siljan is Sweden’s 6th largest lake (Lake Vanern is Europe’s 3rd largest lake and Sweden’s largest). Together with two smaller lakes that connect to it, it covers over 350 square kilometers (I figure that miles are something less than 2/3 of kilometers, give or take, making it about, maybe, 250 square miles; for comparison’s sake, Lake Sebago in Maine covers about 117 square kilometers (45 square miles) in surface area. Lake Malaren is the third largest lake in Sweden, by the way).
Lake Siljan is within the Dalarna district, and while it looks amazingly like the lake district of Maine, with blue lakes scattered everywhere, in between pine forests, with low hills surrounding the lakes and growing taller in the distance, it is also quite distinct with its traditional architecture and painted red houses (the red paint comes from the copper mine we visited, nearby, in Falun). We stayed at a guest house in Leksand, which is at the bottom of a long finger of the lake. The guesthouse was gorgeous (see picture at top of post), with great food, and we could walk into town and down to the lake shore easily. We also drove to the next village, Tallberg, and hiked a bit down from the hillside, where the village is located, down to the lake and back again. And then we drove still farther north and hiked into a waterfall that is about 100 feet high.
Lake Siljan is so big that this finger seems like a very large lake, when in fact you can’t even glimpse the main part of the lake. When you finally drive north and see the lake, you are still only seeing a large bay of it, with a long peninsula forming what looks like the far end of the lake, but is only enclosing a portion of the lake. To see more about the Lake Siljan region, you can go to: http://www.geographia.com/sweden/lakedistrict.html
Leksand and Rattvik both have churches that date from the 14th century. Locals villages would arrive to church on Sundays by boat, just like the one shown in this photo. While they each have had changes and improvements made, there are bits that remain from those early centuries, such as the crucifixes from the 1300s. We couldn’t take photos in the Rattvik church, as there was a wedding going on. A number of guests—including young adults—to the wedding were wearing local traditional outfits, as these are still brought out for celebrations and holidays.
Leksand is the home of the largest Midsummer festival in Sweden, where Midsummer (Midsommar) is the main holiday of the year. Over 14,000 people come to Leksand and join in watching the “maypole” raised. Each local village in Dalarna has its own maypole (It really is a midsummer pole, but I guess it got translated as “maypole” because that made sense to English language users), which stands in the village all year.
After leaving lake Siljan we visited a copper mine that was being mined in the 800s (or earlier) and closed in 1992. It was the source of most of the world’s copper in the 1600s, and was responsible for Sweden’s great wealth in that same century.
Our last stop for the weekend was Carl and Karen Larson’s house (shown in this photo), where they raised their 8 children and created a beautiful country home, filled with Carl’s paintings, both on canvas and on the walls and doors, and with Karen’s gorgeous self-designed textiles (weavings, needlepoint and embroideries). It is a place that lifts the spirits, and is in a beautiful area, with those red-painted houses with white gingerbread trim not only dominating, but being the only option for houses, besides the beautiful golden yellow that also comes from another stage of copper production.
And to see more of the Larson’s house, here is another link, along with one to Carl Larson’s paintings, many of which were of family members in that house.
No comments:
Post a Comment